CASTELLUCCI, Stella

STELLA CASTELLUCCI (b. 1930) is an American harpist, composer, arranger, and music educator born in Los Angeles. She began her career as a staff musician at ABC Radio and later spent eight years performing in ensembles accompanying singer Peggy Lee. She is regarded as an important representative of jazz harp.
Her creative work focuses primarily on jazz, blues, and popular music for harp. She has composed original solo pieces and arranged standards, ballads, and contemporary songs. Rhythm for Harp, co-written with Verlye Mills, contains original pieces and studies in jazz, blues, bossa nova, Latin music, and rock styles. The listed solo works include Blues for Harp, Modern Valse Triste, Mariachi Mood, Theme and Improvisation, and Jazz Waltz. She also wrote the instructional book An Approach to Jazz and Popular Music for the Harp. Her work has contributed significantly to developing the harp’s role in jazz and popular music.